Tips for beginner in BJ: Mandarin night schools near Sanlitun?

[Triling]

I'm moving to Sanlitun and looking for language schools to learn at night time.

I know that typical language schools run 4 hours per day everyday but I simply don't have time to do this, so I will need something shorter and a bit less focused on writing/reading/grammar.

 

I'm pretty much a beginner (I can say a few things and hold conversations on weixin) but I don't feel that I need to begin from 你好 either.

As a professional working in Beijing, I don't really have the luxury of doing a course and slowly learning so I would like to focus on speaking and listening.

 

Does anyone know any good places near Sanlitun?

I've heard good things about places near Wudakou but it might be a bit too out of the way for me.

[ChTTay]

Are you wanting classes or one on one?

If you can do 1 on 1 then really you can do it anytime , anywhere for as long as you want. There are tutors advertising on the Internet and you can probably find them just by keeping an eye out in cafes etc round where you live. Language schools will also offer 1on1 classes although they will likely be a bit more expensive.

I think "Live the language" and "That's mandarin" are in your neck of the woods.

[Triling]

I'm agnostic about it but worried about quality of one-on-one instructors.

 

I will check out Live The Language and That's Mandarin though. Are those English names or the names actually used?

Do I find them on Baidu?

Thank you!!

[edelweis]

Live the language post on this forum, thread here:

LTL Mandarin School with Chinese homestays

That's Mandarin also post on this forum, thread here:

 That's Mandarin Chinese Language School, Beijing and Shanghai

There are some reviews in other threads, does the search box (upper right corner) work in the Mainland?

here's one for instance:

Review of That's Mandarin

(brr life without google   )

[Triling]

thank you!!

[ChTTay]

 

Are those English names or the names actually used?

 

...they are their names.

 

 

worried about quality of one-on-one instructors

 

Yeah, you will need to hunt around to find a good one but its worth it. Word of mouth recommendations are useful too. If you work here and work with other foreigners who have been here longer, see if any of them have a good tutor or know someone who does.

 

There is no reason why a group teacher will be good/better just because they teach group classes though.

 

 

does the search box (upper right corner) work in the Mainland?

 

You just need to click on 'google' and change it to 'forum'.

[abcdefg]

I would say by all means do one-to-one. Since you have a limited amount of time and have specific ideas about what sort of things you want to learn, it would be much more efficient. You will probably waste at least some time in a class, possibly a lot.

 

Small-group beginner classes can be excruciating. I cannot begin to tell you about the outdated techniques usually employed. "Now turn to your neighbor, shake hands and say..." Don't even consider large group classes in your situation.

 

Furthermore, the teacher can come to your home or your office, so you won't need to spend travel time.

 

You can hire a professional teacher who wants to supplement his or her group-class income. I've done this at several schools. If you approach the teacher directly, it's usually cheaper. Realize that may not be feasible.

[Bad Cao Cao]

"I simply don't have time to do this, so I will need something shorter and a bit less focused"

 

"As a professional working in Beijing, I don't really have the luxury"

 

"Does anyone know any good places near Sanlitun?"

 

lol

[Triling]

Thanks for the recommendations guys. Sarcastic comments are appreciated too, I guess.

 

Do any of you have teacher recommendations?

How much am I looking at per hour for tutors?

[ChTTay]

In Wudaokou you can find a student studying teaching Chinese as a foreign language for 50-60 rmb. More professional ones are usually around 100 at least. My last tutor was 120 but she had been doing it for 10 years and was definitely worth it.

In fact, she lives in CDB area so might make the trip to you if you're interested.

[zhouhaochen]

As a little follow up on Bad Cao Caos comment:

 

"As a professional working in Beijing, I don't really have the luxury of doing a course and slowly learning so I would like to focus on speaking and listening"

"I will need something shorter and a bit less focused on writing/reading/grammar."

 

I do not think that people who take four hour a day courses try to learn the language slowly. And however much you might need a way to learn fluent Mandarin in a few hours after work, that is simply not going to happen, whatever teacher or method you get.

 

If you do want to learn fluent Mandarin, then reading and grammar are not a luxury, but a necessity. You can get through the first stages of leraning Mandarin with poor tones, no characters and no grammar foundation, however then you will be stuck. To get further you will then have to learn all the basics that you did not learn at the beginning, which will end up taking you much longer than if you had learned them properly straight away.

 

The only "shortcut" you can use, is to pay less attention to hand writing and focus on character recognition only instead (though hand writing helps a lot with character recognition). Everything else is not optional if you want to become fluent.

 

I have a lot of conversations like this with students - be careful! Read this forum, listen to people who studied Mandarin to fluency and be realistic in what you aim for.

 

Often the people who are the most rushed to learn Mandarin end up being the slowest....

 

Note: if you do not want fluency, but are just looking to learn some basic survival Chinese, then you can disregard everything I just said

[Triling]

zhouhaochen I guess there must be some wisdom in what you say. 

So you don't think it's possible to learn survival first or disregard writing completely? 

Honestly these days most communication is done by typing pinyin or reading so I don't see the point in hand-writing at all and I don't need to pass HSK tests or anything like that.

I just want to achieve conversational fluency as soon as possible.

Perhaps 4 hours a day is the best way to do this, but since I cannot do that, I was hoping there might be, if not a shortcut, at least another way to get there.

Certainly, when I learned English as a (non-English speaking) youngster, I did not sit in ESL to learn English; I just played with kids, watched TV and sat in English speaking classrooms, not understanding what is going on.

[abcdefg]

So you don't think it's possible to learn survival first or disregard writing completely?

Sure it's possible to learn survival Chinese first and then come back to supplement it later, if and when you have the time and interest in doing more with the language. I don't think that's what @Z meant in post #11, above.

[tysond]

> So you don't think it's possible to learn survival first or disregard writing completely? 

 

In my opinion, survival Chinese can be learned quite quickly.

 

Maybe 40-60 hours of instruction in a short period, and you'll be up and running, able to make sentences and order things and bargain for prices and so on, with a few hundred words of vocabulary, a fairly solid understanding of pinyin, and basic pronunciation, and listening skills to understand very simple, slowly spoken sentences and numbers and so on.   No reading required.   Doing 4-6 hours a day this takes a few weeks.  

 

But this is not fluency - it's truly survival.  If you want fluency you'll need to actually learn to read, because intermediate textbooks pretty quickly drop pinyin, and you'll probably not get enough practice of just talking to get very far.  And so you'll need to go back and learn the characters for those few hundred words, plus how characters work and so on in general.

 

I work every day, but make pretty decent progress with average of 1 hour at-the-desk self-study a day, and 4 hours of 1:1 lessons a week, plus some movies/TV/podcasts etc while I do other things.  

[zhouhaochen]

@Triling

I think Tysond and abcdefg answered your question quite well. My comment was based on if you want to learn fluent Mandarin and even for that there is certainly no one way of learning it. When I studied I made pretty much all the mistakes I recommend not to and still ended up learning Mandarin. It is just quicker to reach fluency if you build a proper base at the beginning. So it all comes down to what you are looking for. Quick survival skills, which will take extra time correcting later or slower spoken progress but with the right foundation to go to fluency.

And yes, hand-writing is the one area you can indeed pay less attention to, because as you rightly said, you will not use it very much in your daily life. I would not leave it away completely though, because learning how to read a language you have no idea how to write can hold you back - but there are different opinions on that topic.

 

Think about what you are looking for, look at the resources you have available and then make a plan how you can realisticaly get to where you want to get to.

[studychinese]

Go for the private tutor, not the school. With a tutor you can make things fit YOUR schedule, which is can see is a priority for you.

[Lu]

Certainly, when I learned English as a (non-English speaking) youngster, I did not sit in ESL to learn English; I just played with kids, watched TV and sat in English speaking classrooms, not understanding what is going on.

So let's say you spent about 8 hours a day (or more?) listening to English and trying to communicate in English. Now take the number of days it took you to learn decent English x 8. My guess is that you still end up with a lot of hours. If you spend half as many hours on focused study of Chinese, you'll get pretty far. 'Learning like a child' is generally only the best method for actual children in an immersion environment. Adults need to employ different methods.

[zhouhaochen]

@Triling: wise words from Mr. Lu above

 

Learning Chinese will be quite a different experience to learning English for you. If of course you are working in an only  Chinese speaking company, have only Chinese speaking friends and use Chinese all day that would be great and get you ahead quickly (though you still need class to learn tones etc.), but you would be the first foreigner living in Sanlitun I meet that applies to....

[Triling]

1. BICC http://www.hibicc.com/   
2. BLCU Beijing Language and Culture University - full-time course only? someone said it was mediocre, but many said it's good
3. That's Mandarin Learn Chinese in China - someone said this place has a very innovative course, which differs from normal language courses
4. Live the language 中文学校 - Chinese Language School in Beijing | LTL Mandarin School - someone said they met the founder and he was a very passionate person
5. Hutong School Chinese Language School China: Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Brussels, London, Milan, Paris & Sydney someone said that their company recommends this place to their interns and that it has been good
6. Tsinghua IUP - full-time course only? most people i've read said it's the best
7. Frontiers How to learn Chinese mandarin in Beijing, China-To study Chinese mandarin choose 【Frontiers】-The best Chinese school in Beijing China
8. CLE Learn Chinese in China with CLE

Am I missing anything?
Do any of these have exceptional or horrible reviews?

[Lu]

A good way to find bad reviews can be to google '[subject] is a ripoff' or 'bad experience with [subject]' or such.

 

Note that BLCU and Tsinghua are in Wudaokou, pretty far from Sanlitun.

 

I don't have any personal experience with the Hutong School, but the organisation I used to work for used to refer its interns there and they were all pretty happy with its various services.